Heaven rewards diligence, but there are always fairies plotting against me.

One hundred li east of Dayuan City lies Wohu Mountain.

The mountains here stretch endlessly, resembling a crouching tiger, with spiritual energy rising in the valleys as wisps of white mist. This is the ancestral home of the Zhao family, one of the three great families of Dayuan City.

Unlike the Iron Sword Sect, which focuses on the art of warfare, the Zhao family is known for cultivating spiritual herbs, taming spirit beasts, and operating trade routes.

In the cultivation world of the Great Yuan Dynasty, the Zhao family has always played the role of "peacemaker," acting discreetly and navigating complex relationships with all sides.

However, in Lin Wuwen's secret letter that was announced to the world, the Zhao family was the most unfathomable link.

Although they rarely directly intercepted and killed rogue cultivators, the spirit stones needed for the operation of the formations within the restricted area, the special spiritual medicines needed to conceal the blood energy, and the trade routes for transporting those "blood-eating" remnant souls out of the country were all secretly provided by the Zhao family.

It can be said that without the Zhao family's cover, Lin Wuwen and the Iron Sword Sect's evil deeds would have been exposed a hundred years ago.

At this moment, the atmosphere inside the Zhao family's ancestral home, "Wohuzhuang," was a hundred times more tense than usual.

Zhao Wufeng, the head of the Zhao family, stood in front of the family council hall, looking at the rolling dark clouds in the sky, his face so gloomy it was almost dripping with water.

"Patriarch, the Divine Sword Sect's warships have already passed Qingfeng Ridge. They will arrive here in about an incense stick's time!" A Golden Core stage deacon from the Zhao family scrambled into the courtyard, his voice trembling with tears.

"What's the panic!"

Zhao Wufeng roared, his voice carrying the pressure of a mid-stage Purple Mansion Realm cultivator, which shook the steward to the ground.

Zhao Wufeng is over four hundred years old this year. He is usually very well-maintained and looks like a middle-aged scholar in his forties. But at this moment, his eyes are full of sinister and crazy thoughts.

"That brainless brute, Iron Madman, relied on his brute strength and only knew how to defend the mountain gate. He deserved to be wiped out!" Zhao Wufeng snorted coldly and looked around at the Zhao family's high-ranking members.

Behind him stood five family elders at the Golden Core stage, as well as three mysterious figures with a somewhat sinister aura, dressed in black robes.

"My Zhao family is not like the Iron Sword Sect. We have the tacit approval of the Great Yuan City Lord's Mansion, and we also have this Myriad Beasts Devouring Heaven Formation!" Zhao Wufeng said through gritted teeth. "Moreover, the Xiao family patriarch has already sent me a message. As long as we can hold off Chu Chang for half a day, the experts from the City Lord's Mansion and the Xiao family army will flank us from the rear and wipe out these remnants of the Divine Sword Sect in one fell swoop!"

"The patriarch is right! Our Zhao family has tamed tens of thousands of first and second-tier spirit beasts. The beast tide alone could exhaust them to death!" A Zhao family elder echoed, a ruthless glint in his eyes.

"Open the Blood Pool of a Hundred Beasts, awaken the Heaven-Shaking Divine Ox!"

Zhao Wufeng took a deep breath and issued the order in a stern voice.

As his command was given, the entire Crouching Tiger Mountain began to tremble slightly. Countless spirit beasts kept in the valley let out uneasy roars, and a thick aura of blood and violence rapidly gathered above the Zhao family manor.

Zhao Wufeng looked at the array patterns beneath his feet that were beginning to glow with blood-red light, and felt a little more at ease.

The Zhao family had been preparing for this day for hundreds of years.

"Chu Chang, since you insist on driving us to annihilation, then I'll show you what it truly means to be utterly wiped out!"

The dark clouds in the sky hung extremely low, as if they were about to crush the entire Wohu Mountain.

Suddenly, a violent void fluctuation came, and three huge blue stone warships pierced through the thick clouds, like three ancient beasts, and hovered directly above the Zhao family manor with a rumbling thunder.

On the deck of the warship, the disciples of the Divine Sword Sect all had their hands on their sword hilts, their faces showing a murderous aura.

At the bow of the foremost warship, Chu Chang, dressed in black, stood with his hands behind his back, coldly looking down at the Zhao family manor shrouded in a blood-red light curtain.

Behind him, nine figures, exuding an overwhelming aura of death, stood in perfect unison.

The leader, Lin Wuwen, had empty eyes, and his dark golden skin shimmered with a cold luster in the dim light.

Beside him was the newly crafted "Eight Heavenly Demons".

The corpses of Zhao Wuji, Tie Kuangtu, and six Golden Core elders who originally belonged to the Iron Sword Sect and the Divine Sword Sect.

They were all dressed in jet-black demonic armor, their exposed skin a dark iron color, covered with black soul-controlling runes like spider webs.

When Zhao Wuji and Tie Kuangtu's faces were seen, a commotion broke out in the Zhao family manor below.

"That's... Zhao Wuji, the Grand Elder of the Divine Sword Sect?!"

"And Iron Madman! Wasn't he dead? How come he's standing there?"

"Those are puppets! Heavens, that Chu Chang turned them all into puppets!"

The morale of the Zhao family disciples plummeted to rock bottom in an instant.

Turning a former powerful cultivator at the Purple Mansion stage into a puppet is a method that is even more cruel and terrifying than that of ordinary demonic cultivators.

"Zhao Wufeng, come out and face your death."

Chu Chang looked down and spoke calmly.

"Chu Chang!"

Zhao Wufeng ascended into the air, staring intently at Chu Chang through the blood-red defensive light barrier, his eyes flashing with fear and resentment.

"As the Supreme Deacon of the Divine Sword Sect, instead of thinking about how to recuperate and rebuild, you use the guise of acting on behalf of Heaven to annihilate various forces within our Great Yuan Dynasty. How are your actions any different from those of the demonic path? The Great Yuan Dynasty will absolutely not let you off the hook!"

"The Demonic Path?"

Chu Chang chuckled softly, a smile that appeared incredibly cold against the dark background.

"When you were raising rogue cultivators as food, why didn't you talk about the demonic path? When you were secretly colluding and harming your fellow cultivators, why didn't you talk about the laws of the Great Yuan Dynasty?"

Chu Chang slightly raised his hand: "I will give you ten breaths. Surrender, or be annihilated."

"Arrogant brat! Do you really think my Zhao family is as easy to manipulate as the Iron Sword Sect?"

Zhao Wufeng, enraged, laughed coldly and suddenly flicked his sleeve: "Ten Thousand Beasts Devouring the Sky, Rise!"

Rumble!

As Zhao Wufeng finished speaking, a deafening roar of wild beasts suddenly echoed through the valleys surrounding the Zhao family manor.

Countless jackals, tigers, leopards, birds, and beasts, with bloodshot eyes and exuding a violent, bloody aura, surged out from the surrounding mountains and forests like a black tide.

These spirit beasts had clearly been fed berserk drugs and had completely lost their minds, leaving only their bloodthirsty instincts.

Even more terrifying, in a huge pool of blood behind the manor, a giant rhinoceros-like spirit beast, tens of feet tall and covered in black scales, slowly stood up.

That was the Heaven-Shaking Divine Ox, a fourth-tier low-level spirit beast that the Zhao family had worshipped for a hundred years!

"roar!"

The Heaven-Shaking Divine Ox let out a deep roar, and with each step it took, the earth trembled violently.

"Chu Chang, even if you have nine Purple Mansion level puppets, how many can you kill in front of this army of ten thousand beasts? Hahahaha!" Zhao Wufeng laughed wildly.

Faced with this overwhelming tide of beasts, Chu Chang's expression remained completely unchanged.

"Lin Wuwen, go and deal with that beast."

"Eight Heavenly Demons, follow me to slaughter the Zhao family."

"Yes, Master."

The nine puppets simultaneously let out a hoarse growl.

Whoosh!

Lin Wuwen's figure blurred, and he transformed into a dark golden lightning bolt in the sky, rushing towards the enormous, earth-shaking divine bull.

Meanwhile, Zhao Wuji, Tie Kuangtu, and the other eight Heavenly Demons, under Chu Chang's divine control, plummeted like eight black meteors into the vast horde of beasts covering the mountains and plains.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The moment the Eight Fiends landed, the earth trembled, and their terrifying physical power directly shattered the spirit beasts within a hundred feet radius into a bloody mist.

"kill!"

Iron Madman's puppet let out an unconscious roar. Although it had lost its former intelligence, its fighting instincts had become even more ferocious under the enhancement of the "Heavenly Demon Puppet Technique".

He didn't use any weapons; he simply charged into the densest part of the beast tide using his arms covered in dark iron-colored dragon patterns.

Tear!

A second-tier mad lion with strength equivalent to the Foundation Establishment stage pounced over. Iron Madman didn't even glance at it, reached out and grabbed the mad lion's upper and lower jaws, and then tore it apart with both hands!

Blood rained down from the sky!

That raging lion was actually torn in two by him!

On the other side, the Grand Elder Zhao Wuji, now a puppet, exuded a chilling, demonic aura. Wherever he passed, ice froze everything. Countless spirit beasts were instantly frozen into ice sculptures upon touching the black demonic aura, and then, swept away by the aura, turned into a cloud of black dust.

This was not a battle at all, but a one-sided massacre.

Puppet masters at the Golden Core and Foundation Establishment stages are an insurmountable nightmare for most of these spirit beasts, who are only at the first or second tier.

"This...how is this possible?!"

Standing inside the blood-red light curtain, Zhao Wufeng was dumbfounded as he watched his proud army of ten thousand beasts be routed in just a hundred breaths.

That's the wealth and resources accumulated by the Zhao family over generations!

However, what made him feel even more desperate was the loud noise coming from behind.

boom!

Lin Wuwen was already engaged in battle with the enormous, earth-shaking divine bull.

Although the Heaven-Shaking Divine Ox was enormous and incredibly strong, it was far slower than Lin Wuwen. Lin Wuwen used his ghostly movements to flash around the ox's massive body, leaving a deep fist mark on the ox's thick scales with each punch.

"roar!"

The divine bull roared in agony, its single horn unleashing a sky full of yellow earth-elemental energy in an attempt to suppress Lin Wuwen.

But Lin Wuwen neither dodged nor evaded. Relying on his Heavenly Demon Body, which had been re-tempered by the Chaos True Essence, he forcibly withstood the attack. Then, he leaped up and landed directly on the head of the Divine Ox.

"die."

Lin Wuwen cleaved his five fingers into claws and plunged them fiercely into the head of the divine ox.

[Heavenly Demon Devours Souls!]

The violent demonic energy surged wildly into the divine bull's mind along his arm, tearing the soul of this fourth-tier spirit beast into pieces.

The colossal, mountain-like divine ox, after letting out a mournful cry of despair, collapsed with a deafening roar, smashing countless pavilions and towers behind it.

"No! The divine cow!"

Zhao Wufeng's lips twitched with heartache.

At that moment, Chu Chang, who had been standing at the bow of the warship, finally moved.

He moved swiftly and instantly appeared above the blood-red protective array of the Zhao family manor.

"I will keep this tortoise shell for you."

Chu Chang slowly raised his right hand, and in his palm, the black "Dust-Severing" ancient sword, which he had seized from the Iron Sword Sect, was emitting a faint and cold light. Although this sword was currently only a broken sword that had not been fully unsealed, its material was so hard that it even surpassed ordinary top-grade magic weapons.

"break."

Chu Chang poured his chaotic true essence into the Broken Dust Sword and gently slashed at the blood-red light screen below.

Tear!

A thin, yet perfectly refined, gray sword aura flashed by.

The seemingly impenetrable "Ten Thousand Beasts Devouring the Heavens" light barrier, upon contact with this gray sword energy, was like a fragile piece of white paper being sliced ​​by a sharp blade, silently tearing open with a huge gash.

"What?!"

Zhao Wufeng and all the elders of the Zhao family were completely annihilated.

This great formation could withstand the full force of a late-stage Purple Mansion cultivator for a while, yet it was broken by this young man with a casual flick of his wrist.

"Retreat! Quickly retreat to the place where the Ancestor is in seclusion in the back mountains!"

Zhao Wufeng screamed, completely disregarding the lives of his disciples, and turned into a streak of light, flying madly towards a solitary peak behind the manor.

"Trying to leave?"

Chu Chang sneered, leaving an afterimage in his wake, and caught up with Zhao Wufeng in the next moment.

"Master, be careful!"

The eldest elder of the Zhao family, an old man in the late stage of the Golden Core realm, gritted his teeth, turned around abruptly, and summoned a black Hundred Beast Banner, which transformed into countless demonic shadows to block Chu Chang, attempting to buy time for Zhao Wufeng to escape.

However, Chu Changlian did not pause for a moment.

"roll."

He simply swung his hand out casually.

【Chaotic Grand Capture!】

A giant golden hand appeared out of thin air, crushing the countless demonic shadows in the sky, and grabbing the Zhao family's Grand Elder, who was in the late Golden Core stage, in its palm before squeezing him tightly.

Bang!

A cloud of blood mist exploded in mid-air, and Chu Chang instantly retrieved a golden pill.

At this moment, Zhao Wufeng had already flown to the front of the solitary peak and cried out loudly, "Ancestor, save me! Chu Chang is coming!"

Rumble

The stone gate of the solitary peak suddenly opened, and a powerful, decaying yet exceptionally violent aura awakened from within.

"Who dares to act so presumptuously in my Zhao family?!"

An extremely old voice, filled with boundless rage, rang out.

Immediately afterwards, a gaunt old man with age spots on his face, nearing the end of his life, slowly walked out of the cave.

This is the only pillar of the Zhao family, Zhao Tianqiong, the Zhao family patriarch who has lived for nearly five hundred years and whose cultivation has reached the late stage of the Purple Mansion Realm.

However, when Zhao Tianqiong saw Chu Chang chasing after him, and Lin Wuwen and the Eight Demon Kings flying rapidly towards them from behind, his angry expression instantly froze.

"Lin Wuwen? And Tie Kuangtu and Zhao Wuji? What happened to them...?"

Zhao Tianqiong, having lived long enough, could tell at a glance that these powerful figures had now become puppets who were no longer in control of their own lives.

"Ancestor, let's fight them! The reinforcements from the Great Yuan City Lord's Mansion are on their way!" Zhao Wufeng shouted as if he had grasped at a straw.

Zhao Tianqiong's expression was uncertain. He looked at Chu Chang, who had a calm expression, and then at his family, whose blood had flowed like a river behind him. He took a deep breath.

"Fellow Daoist's abilities are extraordinary; my Zhao family is convinced."

Zhao Tianqiong cupped his hands in a respectful gesture towards Chu Chang, his tone surprisingly pleading: "Today's events are entirely the fault of my Zhao family. My Zhao family is willing to offer up all our assets and withdraw from the Great Yuan Dynasty, only asking that you, fellow Daoist, allow my Zhao family to preserve one lineage. What do you say?"

"Ancestor?!" Zhao Wufeng's face was full of disbelief.

Chu Chang coldly looked at Zhao Tianqiong and said indifferently, "If you don't cut the weeds at the root, they'll grow back in the spring breeze. Do you think I would make such a low-level mistake?"

"Are you trying to force me to die with you?!" A glint of madness flashed in Zhao Tianqiong's eyes. "Although my lifespan is running out, if I were to self-destruct, it would be enough to leave you severely injured!"

"You don't have a chance to self-destruct."

Before Chu Chang finished speaking, Lin Wuwen, Tie Kuangtu, and Zhao Wuji, three members of the Eight Demons of Heaven, had already locked onto Zhao Tianqiong in a triangular formation.

"kill."

boom!

The three powerful warriors of the Purple Mansion Realm attacked simultaneously, and their violent energy instantly enveloped Zhao Tianqiong.

Zhao Tianqiong was old and frail, and his blood and qi were severely depleted. Facing the attack of three puppets of the same level who had no sense of pain and were extremely strong, he only fought for a dozen rounds before Tie Kuangtu punched him, breaking his ribs and causing him to spit out blood.

"Aaaaah! You little beast, you forced this old man to do this!"

Zhao Tianqiong's hair was disheveled, and his face was contorted with rage. He suddenly slapped his chest, spitting out a mouthful of his life essence onto a golden talisman in his hand.

hum!

The talisman instantly transformed into a blinding golden light, enveloping his entire body.

"A substitute puppet talisman? No, it's a mother-child golden cicada shedding its shell talisman!" Chu Chang frowned slightly.

Before Lin Wuwen's attack could land, the golden light dissipated, and Zhao Tianqiong, who had been standing in place, turned into an empty, withered cicada shell. His true form appeared in the sky ten miles away, frantically fleeing towards Dayuan City as a blur.

As for Zhao Wufeng, who was left behind, he was completely abandoned by his own ancestor.

"Ancestor! You've abandoned me?!"

Zhao Wufeng screamed in despair.

"You are worthless."

Chu Chang didn't even glance at Zhao Wufeng. Lin Wuwen casually slapped down with his palm, directly smashing Zhao Wufeng's head into his chest cavity, annihilating his soul and spirit.

Seeing Zhao Tianqiong, who had already fled to the horizon and was now just a black dot, several Golden Core elders from the Divine Sword Sect hurriedly stepped forward.

"Supreme Deacon, that old fellow cultivates wind-attribute techniques, making him extremely fast. He's clearly heading to Dayuan City to fetch reinforcements. If we chase after him now, we'll likely stumble into an ambush set by the City Lord's Mansion and the Xiao family!"